The petition which the envoys were to carry across the country to Washington was, even when it left California, the largest ever signed in one place. It was 18,333 feet long, and contained 500,000 names.
Very soon after the envoys started, President Wilson made his first declaration for Suffrage. He also went to New Jersey and voted for it.
Frances Joliffe was called back to California by illness in her family at the beginning of the journey. Sara Bard Field, therefore, continued alone across the continent with her two Swedish convoys. It was a remarkable trip, filled with unexpected adventure. A long procession of Mayors and Governors welcomed Mrs. Field in her nation-wide journey. Everywhere she advertised the Democratic record in Congress. One of the early mishaps was to get lost in the desert of Utah. They wandered about for a whole day, and regained the highway in time to arrive in Salt Lake City at five o’clock in the afternoon. Later in Kansas came a more serious mishap. But let Mrs. Field speak for herself. No better picture can be given of her picturesque journey than her own reports, published from time to time in the Suffragist.
From Fallon, Nevada, Mrs. Field wrote:
Here we are in the heart of Nevada’s desert, having traveled already over three hundred and eighty miles of every kind of country—meadow land, green, luxurious ranches, rolling hill country, steep mountain grades, the grass lands of the Sierras, and now through the bare but beautiful desert.
We reached Reno at midnight on Sunday after a vision of the sublime chaos of the Sierras at night.
At night, from a car flying the Congressional Union colors and the Amendment banner, Miss Martin and I spoke in the streets of Reno. The crowd listened with close attention, and pressed closely about the car to sign the petition.
At noon today, we left Reno for the most trying and perilous part of our journey. We are traveling across some six hundred miles of barren land known as the “Great American Desert.” Our next destination is Salt Lake City.
From Salt Lake City, Mrs. Field wrote:
The State Capitol, where each meeting was held, stands on a hill. The world is at its feet. The mountains wall the entire city.... While the earth was glowing in the light of a flaming sunset, and the mountains about stood like everlasting witnesses, Representative Howell of Utah pledged his full and unqualified support to the Susan B. Anthony Amendment in the coming session of Congress.